You can't hold on to water
by Yanghuntlove
Summary: Season 8- Richard Webber one shot as he muses on his current situation with his wife, Adele. Sentimental, nostalgia.


**Author's note: I am experiencing a nostalgic renaissance in terms of Grey's at the moment. Feeling very sentimental about my favourite characters! Think it is all the watching of glorious CO clips! **

**As you all know from my chapter (27) about the grandfather in Baby, baby, baby, I love Richard Webber, especially his relationship and interactions with CO this season. Beautifully played in season 8 by Jim Pickens Jr (totally underated and underused actor in show in my opinion). I am sensing that something heartbreaking is going to happen to Adele, so I wanted to write a reflection from his perspective. **

**A new chapter of Baby, baby, baby, will be coming soon- Cristina, Owen, full time jobs and 2 small children! **

**Hope you like it!xxxx. Much **

You can't hold on to water.

His deep brown eyes wandered sadly over the woman he had loved for life, even when he had loved another. Age sat well on her. Time had altered her physical form but until recently not her spirit. Now, as she stood before him, gazing blankly ahead, he did not see the once fierce tigress whose sharp tongue could slice false promises or declarations to shreds, nor the loving nurturer who had illuminated his younger years and reawakened his passions as he morphed from a young boy into his current state of self definition as an elder, world worn man. He looked and he saw her- his wife, she was present in the here and now, she was there. But yet it was as if he was looking at a complete stranger or a totally weightless version of someone completely familiar. She now only existed in the present she lived in the already gone before.

Pulling in a steadying breathe he forced himself to look closer, examine deeper, he could see a glimmer of her old light. But the light was rapidly dimming, the vivid colours were fading, the music fading to silence. Soon she would be swathed in total darkness and he would be her only beacon. He wasn't sure if regarded that as his heaviest burden or his greatest honour. His whole life had been marked out by dependency. The pride and joy of being relied upon and hailed as the leader, the sage, the teacher in the workplace juxtaposed with his own feelings of guilt depending and feeding on the elixir of vines in order to sustain himself when his own hearts desires had torn apart the hearts of so many others.

Memory is both the sweetest pleasure and cruelest torture. For this couple there were no shared memories left. No more picking over old anecdotes or recalling stories of the special others who had become characters in the vast chapters of their living story. He was now living in monologue, the spotlight on the dialogue with her had faded to black. She had taken her final curtain call and exited the stage. She was living in total isolation in the company of many. He mused on how it felt for her to be left unsure, uncertain of who you are. She had reached a final destination but was unable to recall any steps of the journey she had taken to get there.

Today when he thought of what he now felt for her, it hurt him to admit that it was neither akin to love or pity. It was fear. Paralysing fear. He feared to leave her alone to go to work, he feared to be near her and still for them both to be totally alone in each others company.

The singular question played on his mind repeatedly like a scratched record stuck in a groove. How do you exist in a world where your love doesn't? Yes he had lost Ellis to this same disease but he had still had her- his beautiful Adele. It had taken a great loss to realise again that he had always had a great love. She had been standing right in front of him. He had pushed her into the shadows but she had kept on stepping back into his path. Time and time again she had let her heart rule her head, swallowed her anger, her pride and her hurt and been there waiting for him. Love did not lie, as some of his students believed, in the scalpel or the procedure, nor in the accolades or the surgical reputation. It resided in the warmth of the homes, in the simplicity of a soft smile from a friend, the tender kiss of a lover, the safe embrace of a soulmate.

Reality is just that- all to real, brutally honest and at times startlingly liberating.

How long do you try to grasp on to what is slipping through your fingers? You can tighten your grips but that doesn't change the viscosity of the substance. When do you just have to open your fingers, hold up your palms and surrender?

You can't hold on to water. You let it wash you clean and then watch it slowly drain away.


End file.
